Trevor Noah, a black man from South Africa, fails to see the irony in his demand that Americans turn their arms over to the government.

As is the case with all Progressives who have a late night television perch, Trevor Noah, the black South African who took over Jon Stewart’s post at The Daily Show, has been open about his wish that the U.S. government should seize all guns in private hands. (By the way, you’ve surely noticed that none of these Progressives seem disturbed by the fact that they’re attempting to give Donald Trump, the man they love to hate, virtually unlimited control over an unarmed American populace. The lack of logic confounds me but — hey! — they’re Leftists, so why am I expecting logic anyway?)

Trevor Noah’s on-air remarks about guns are same-old, same-old, so I won’t rehash them here. When it comes to gun grabbing, the Left has nothing original to offer. What’s more interesting is what Noah said off camera:

In a between-the-scenes moment from “The Daily Show” posted online Thursday, Noah took on critics who have questioned whether the foreign-born comedian should be chiming in on gun control. “This is an American conversation,” conservative radio host Larry O’Connor told Fox Business in a clip Noah showed his audience.

“People go, ‘Why do you have an opinion about this?’ And I say, ‘I hear what you’re saying but ask yourself this question: Why did nobody say that when Americans were protesting for South Africans to get freedom during apartheid?’ No one asked that question.”

Noah makes a valid point. People of good will, when they see something wrong, tend to have opinions. But if Noah is going to compare modern America with apartheid South Africa, he’d do well to take that comparison one step further and, instead of asking us whether he’s allowed to have an opinion, ask himself a different question: “Would apartheid have existed in South Africa if that country had a Second Amendment?”

The only possible answer to that question is “No.” The white South African government was able to exert tyrannical control over black South Africans, who were a majority, because the latter had no recourse. They were disarmed and helpless before tyranny.

Before opining again about gun control, Trevor Noah would do well to read Kevin Williamson’s truly splendid discourse on the rights articulated in the Second Amendment, rights that live in all people without regard to “documentary proof”:

The document does not create the right; the right precedes the document, which merely recognizes it and ensures that the government is constrained when, inevitably, its all-too-human members are tempted to violate that right.

Progressives take a tabula rasa view of the human condition, the human animal, the human experience, and human society. In this view human beings, individually and corporately, can be shaped into . . . whatever we desire to shape them into. Rights, in this understanding, come from the state: We decide together, through democratic and other political means, what rights and obligations people are to have, and the state acts (in theory) as our instrument in that matter. If you take that view, then the progressive attitude toward the right to keep and bear arms — that it is more trouble than it is worth and that it therefore should be reduced or eliminated altogether — is entirely understandable.

Conservatives take a different view, one that is rooted in the nation’s foundational philosophy. The American premise is a theological premise: that all men are endowed by their Creator — not the state — with certain unalienable rights. For our Founding Fathers, who were steeped in the Anglo-Protestant liberal tradition, this was not only the truth but the “self-evident” truth. The right to keep and bear arms, like the right to speak one’s mind, worship as one sees fit, and petition the state for redress of grievances, is not the king’s gift to give or to withhold — the matter was settled by no less an authority than God Himself. For those who are not of a religious cast of mind, the same conclusion can be arrived at through the tradition of natural law and natural rights, which the Christian liberals of the 18th century understood as complementary to their discernment of Divine intent. Whether one believes that man was created by God or by evolutionary processes, the conclusion ends up being the same: Man has reason, individual and corporate dignity, individual and corporate value, and these are not subject to revision by any prince, power, or potentate.

Put another way: The right to keep and bear arms would still be there without the Second Amendment. Like the right not to suffer political or religious repression, it exists with or without the law. It is an aspect of the human being, not an aspect of the governments that human beings institute among themselves. The state does not grant the right — the state exists because the right exists and needs protecting from time to time. The state protects our rights from criminals and marauders, and the Constitution protects our rights from their protectors.

I highly recommend the entire article. It’s one of the best things I’ve read on the subject.

In contrast to Williamson’s accessible, yet scholarly, and profoundly philosophical treatise on natural rights, you need to see a perfect example of the fund of knowledge and intellectual capacity backing up Trevor Noah and other blabber-mouthed Progressive late-night Nanny-staters. The following tweet comes courtesy of a writer for Jimmy Kimmel, the man who gives Sen. Chuck Schumer an even larger bully pulpit than that which the Senate’s biggest bully already possesses:

Kalb has since deleted the tweet but, as we all know, the internet is forever. Also, please note that, when the above screen grab occurred, her tweet had garnered 1,205 likes and 132 retweets. It’s frightening to think how much traction that testament to Progressive ignorance got before it was deleted.

By the way, Kalb’s twitter feed gives some insight into why Kimmel, who apparently used to be funny on The Man Show, is nothing but a Leftist scold now: His writers are dour, scolding, condescending, hate-filled Leftists. Kalb’s views and Kimmel’s views align perfectly, with the only difference being that Kimmel excises the obscenities.

For example, in response to the news that Donna Karan defended Harvey Weinstein by saying the women deserved it because of the way they dressed, a perfect example of victim-shaming circa any year before 1974, Kalb let her displeasure be known:

I don’t know about you, but I would expect something a little more witty and sophisticated from a professional “comedy” writer. I can’t imagine any of Sid Caesar’s writers, for example, saying something like that. They were all good Leftists, but Larry Gelbart, Neil Simon, and even the currently-crazed Carl Reiner, would have eschewed obscenity and made their point with incisive wit.

Kalb, apparently, has been reading and taking seriously the “Jesus is a racist” arguments running riot through Progressive religious thought. See what happens to you if you skip reading the Constitution and, instead, read Progressive babble?

The funniest thing of all about Kalb’s twitter feed is this gem, which she posted after she was taken to task (i.e., ridiculed), for her almost exquisitely uninformed views: